The present invention disclosed herein relates to a device for transferring feels of touch, and more particularly, to a thin film haptic transfer device having multiple operation points and generating various touches or sounds.
Currently released terminals manufactured in various forms such as mobile phones, navigations, digital information displays (DIDs), and tablets basically provide touch interfaces. Connected with a touch interface, as a method of increasing a user experience, recently haptic technology providing a feel of touch has stood out. When a user interacts with a digital object, various forms of the feel of touch are provided in such a way that a feedback formed by blending senses of vision and touch, thereby providing a realistic user interface.
As a typical method of providing a feel of touch, motor systems are most general. Motor systems have been variously applied to mobile devices due to a quick response speed, low power consumption, and easiness of controlling the output of a feel of touch. However, when providing the feel of touch by using motor systems, due to a size of a haptic module, it is difficult to arrange modules and an own thickness of a device becomes greater. Particularly, as typical technology of using a motor system, a structure propagates a vibration to the entire device. Accordingly, since it is difficult to provide a localized haptic sense only to a spot in contact with a hand of a user, it is difficult to be applied to navigations, digital information displays (DIDs), and monitors, which are not portable electronic devices.
To overcome these limitations, recently, film type haptic modules capable of being mounted on display panels have been provided. Film type haptic modules are classified into a case of using a deformation of a material itself by using electroactive polymers and a case of using electrostatic force. In the case of using electroactive polymers, according to properties of polymers, it is possible to realize haptic modules provided as a film type with low power consumption and a quick response speed. In this case, since it is difficult to output enough only using the deformation of polymers, a mass with a certain weight may be used. The deformation of electroactive polymers drives the additional device, and the user receives a feel of touch due to the driving of the additional device. Accordingly, in this case, to output enough, electroactive polymer layers and the additional device are needed.
On the other hand, Korean Patent Application No. 2011-7018443 (hereinafter, referred to as Cited Reference) discloses one of traditional methods of using electrostatic force. In case of Cited Reference, two substrates coated with a conductive material are disposed and charged via the same or different conductive material, respectively. Also, instant attractive and repulsive forces generated by an electrostatic force therebetween generate a feel of touch. As described above, an actuator formed of such two substrates is independently formed on one of a top and a bottom of a touch panel. In real application, an insulating layer inserted into two substrates to prevent a current flow may be additionally necessary.
However, in a traditional technology including Cited Reference, since the entire device vibrates or the entire one substrate vibrates, only the same feel of touch may be felt at all points of the substrate. Accordingly, when using traditional arts, although two or more touch points exist, it is very difficult to embody different haptic feedbacks that are multi-feels of touch or an active haptic feedback, for example, a feeling like water flows without movement of a hand while touching.